Category: Special Effects

Tubes: the Basics

Tubes, or valve amplifiers, are audio processing devices praised for their unique sounds. People associate them to the vacuum tube components they contain. The first electronic amps used vacuum tubes. The combination of an electronic guitar with a tube amp is a perfect example, for it revolutionized the peculiar guitar sounds. Tubes: How They Work…
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Fuzz Distortion

Fuzz distortion is an audio effect that people typically associate to altering the tone of electric guitars, as well as other musical instruments and audio signals. Fuzz is an electronic distortion element that is capable of changing the whole sonic signature. Often, experts describe the rough sound resulting from it as thick and metallic.  Fuzz…
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Bitcrusher

Bitcrusher is a type of audio effect that has a low-quality distortion and creates distortion by reducing the resolution or the bandwidth of digital audio data. The sound resulting from the bitcrusher mimics the sounds of metal and sand. It’s worth mentioning that the perceived sounds tend to change according to the use of the…
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Vocoder

A vocoder or a voice coder usually compresses the human voice in a way in which it becomes more efficient when transmitted over the phone. People have used this technology for the course of many years. At first, it involved the splitting of voice sounds into separate frequency bands. After this, it involved the using…
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Talk Box

Talk box is an audio effect that takes advantage of the human voice. It’s a device that works by taking the unique qualities of the human mouth and vocal tract while lending them to a variety of instruments. A Summary of Human Anatomy: How Do We Talk? In order to understand the basic functions of…
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Prismizer

Prismizer is an audio effect that combines the words prism and harmonizer to form its name. The prismizer’s polyharmonic pitch offers saturation similar to the dispersion of light to a prism. The prismizer is capable of combining pitch and frequency characteristics from multiple sources, and it is typically focused to the processing of the human…
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Direct Note Access (DNA)

Melodyne’s DNA Direct Note Access is the technology that allows one to identify and edit individual notes in the polyphonic material. This system offers unique access to the pitch, duration, timing, and other parameters of notes in the monophonic material. Direct Note Access: How It Works To begin with, DNA Direct Note Access can modify…
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Harmonic Enhancer

A harmonic enhancer is an audio signal processing technique that enhances a signal with phase manipulation, harmonic synthesis of high-frequency signals, and dynamic equalization. People also refer to this technique as exciter, harmonic exciter, or aural exciter. It adds a subtle harmonic distortion. Harmonic synthesis creates higher-order harmonics from the basic frequency signals of a…
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Multi-Effect Signal Processors

Multi-effect signal processors are devices that offer a wide variety of audio effects in one unit. They can modify the pitch of an incoming audio signal, natural reverb effects, time compression and expansion, flanging, delay, and time-reversal and repeat capabilities. The design of most signal processing devices aims at performing more than one function without…
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